A MODERN SOCIETY IS A DANGEROUS PLACE The State can no longer protect its citizens - a review of crime statistics makes this obvious. 88 Innocent Australians get killed in Bali because the Night Club is frequented by Americans. Crazy people high jack a religion and convince uneducated people that they are going to heaven if they blow themselves and innocent children up! We have people in our Country today that have and are still plotting mass killings and destruction. Arabs and Jews have been killing each other for 1,000s of years and our leaders think we should buy into the argument and put our own children at risk. In the never ending march towards globalisation, everything including security is user pays. If you want safety you have to provide it yourself. Just look at the riots in Argentina, the continuous UK soccer violence, 'September 11' and the LA Riots. Our modern drug driven culture undermines all traditional values. Unemployment, poor schooling, family breakdown, absent mothers, substance abuse, problem gambling, TV violence, video games and declining birth rates makes for an unsafe society. Generational welfare, greedy politicians, corrupt business leaders and unregulated capitalism bankrupts the State such that it does not have the means to provide the Institutions it once did. Once our best and brightest at Universities drank a bit of beer and some smoked a little natural dope. Now they take mind altering pills and smoke manufactured 'weed' 100 times more dangerous that the the natural product - the natural product being bad enough as it was! Combine this with 'multi-conflicting-culturalism' and a religious war between East and West, and you end up with one of the most unstable and unsafe times in the history of the Western civilisation. The unfortunate truth is that 'Good' law abiding citizens and their families are vunerable, and they must protect themselves and their families. Banning guns means that they can't. The only thing that banning guns does is to leave the 'Good' at the mercy of filthy rich criminals, high on drugs and armed to the teeth. The State can't even protect politicians any more. If it was not for the patriotic actions of a small group travellers there would have been a airliner smack on the White House. How many atomic bombs would have gone off if a few hundred politicians had died?	THE POLITICIAN'S COLUMN: Want to increase the instance of rape? Want to increase the rate of murder? Want to increase violence? Want to increase theft? Want to send crime through the roof? Want to make things easier for criminals? Want to waste taxes even more? THE KEY TO THIS IS SIMPLE - BAN GUNS Want to live in Disney Land? That's where you belong if you think anybody but the Good follows the Law. Think all guns can be banned? Yeah, just like drugs, pack rape, alcohol, pornography, and child molestation etc! WHY IS AUSTRALIA NOW AT RISK? Because of the biggest taxing government in the History of Australia. When the housing boom stops, the GST and "New Tax System" will be shown to have badly impacted upon the real economy. Excessive tax can only lead to a massive recession. To guard against this the Government is looking to Bush to buy us out of our problems. The deal is simple - back Uncle Sam's wars etc. and Uncle Sam will trade fairly with you. Unfortunately, when two parties are fighting and you choose sides this makes you a target. If Iraq is a threat to Uncle Sam, then how big a threat are they to us? WHY BAN HANDGUNS WHEN YOU HAVE NOT YET BANNED SEMI-AUTO LONG ARMS? It is a fact that a fraction of the Chinese SKS ex-army semi-auto 'assault rifles' that were imported into Australia in the 80's and 90's were never surrendered. Most are still out in the community, hidden yet still available. I'm pretty upset - I handed my guns in, yet the criminals didn't. You have body guards to protect you and your families - who protects mine? Also, when you taught your children about how bad guns are, did you also tell them about how many people have been killed because of drink driving? I suggest that $500M spend on driver education would have saved a lot more lives than gun buy backs.
SOMETHING TO CONSIDER Thousands die with barely a murmur, but mention guns ... Lisa Oldfield SMH, November 11 2002 There's no justice nor worthwhile effect in victimising sports shooters for the crimes of others, writes Lisa Oldfield. Statements from the anti-gun lobby supporting the removal of weapons from law-abiding Australian citizens - most particularly the International Action Network on Small Arms and the Coalition for Gun Control - are emotive and completely without factual basis. No reasonable person can confuse guns used by criminals as having any relationship to firearms owned by licensed, law-abiding sporting shooters. The nonsense dribbled by the anti-gun lobby is misinformation which unjustly and dishonestly scapegoats legitimately licensed shooting enthusiasts without benefit to the community. Australians are killed in many ways. Indeed, some 2500 Australians kill themselves every year. The 400 or so Australians killed as a consequence of drink driving annually, the more than 500 who fall to their death each year, the hundreds who drown and the untold numbers who die through medical accident or malpractice are all important. But nothing gains a headline like the handful who are shot, because it seems the thousands who are killed by other means are somehow accepted. Those who tug at our emotions about guns would have us believe that the murder of about 60 people each year by criminals using guns would miraculously stop if all guns were banned, but evidence worldwide makes it clear this is the stuff of fairytales. Marijuana is banned: does this mean no one is smoking it? Heroin is banned: does that mean you can't buy it? Ecstacy and cocaine are banned: are those substances not available? It is illegal to speed, yet speed cameras are making a fortune. Despite the laws, recreational drug use is at an all-time high. Similarly, it can be argued that road laws have done little to impact on fatal accidents. When politicians and lobbyists speak of banning guns they should go straight to simply banning crime, because the effect will be the same - none at all. Of about 300 murders in Australia each year, generally less than 20 per cent involve the use of a firearm. The Australian Bureau of Statistics makes it clear annual murder trends have remained unchanged despite John Howard spending $500 million buying back 642,000 firearms from the community. I have heard it said that this unprecedented expense was justified if it saved a single life, but did it save anyone? How many lives would that $500 million have saved had the money gone to hospitals or medical research? What advances would have been made in cancer research or children's diseases if they had been the beneficiaries of $500 million of taxpayer funds? The vast majority of murders are committed not with guns, but with knives, blunt instruments and other means. Perhaps we could ban knives and blunt instruments, except history tells us that murderers would then use their bare hands. It is ridiculous to blame legal ownership of guns for what are broader and unrelated social problems. The flaws in the debate on the legal ownership of handguns for competition purposes are clearly exposed by the experience in Britain. Following a tragedy involving a handgun, the authorities banned private ownership. At enormous cost, 200,000 guns were removed from the community. Figures published in the British Hansard on crimes committed with handguns in Britain during 1999-2000 show those crimes have increased more than 40 per cent despite the ban. In that year there were 3685 crimes committed with handguns despite the fact that no ordinary citizen in Britain owns a handgun - so much for bans. The Monash University incident was the first time in five years that a crime had been committed with a licensed handgun, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, whose statistics also show that the increase in handgun-assisted murder is exclusively the result of killers with unlicensed guns. The message is clear: bans do not work because criminals do not hand in their guns. Experience everywhere shows that despite the wholesale removal of guns from law abiding communities, criminals will still procure guns to commit crimes. All law-abiding shooters support heavy penalties for those who use firearms for criminal purposes, but there is no justice and no positive effect in victimising sports shooters for other people's crimes. Lisa Oldfield is the spokeswoman for the Firearm Dealers Association. New Evidence on Gun Control II: The British Experience By Paul Craig Roberts VDARE, 30 July 2002 http://www.vdare.com/roberts/gun_control_part2.htm Important New Book Refutes Gun Control Myths Did you know that:- · a person's chances of being mugged in London are six times higher than in New York City? · assault, robbery and burglary rates are far higher in England than in the U.S.? · in England self-defense of person or property is regarded as an anti-social act, and that a victim who injures or kills an assailant is likely to be treated with more severity than the assailant? Joyce Lee Malcolm blames the rocketing rates of violent and armed crimes in England on government policies that have gone badly wrong. Her careful research in Guns and Violence The English Experience, just released by Harvard University Press leads to this conclusion: Government created a hapless, passive citizenry, then took upon itself the impossible task of protecting it. Its failure could not be more flagrant. Professor Malcolm begins her study of English crime rates, weapons ownership, and attitudes toward self-defense in the Middle Ages. She continues the story through the Tudor-Stuart centuries, the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. She finds that five centuries of growing civility, low crime rates and declining firearm homicide rates ended in the 20th century. Professor Malcolm shows that an unprotected public at the mercy of criminals is the result of (1) the 1967 revision of criminal law, which altered the common law standard for self-defense and began the process of criminalizing self-defense, and (2) increasing restrictions on handguns and other firearms, culminating in the 1997 ban of handgun ownership (and most other firearms). In England the penalty for possessing a handgun is ten years in prison. The result is the one predicted by the National Rifle Association: when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns. During the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent. During seven months of 2001, armed robberies in London rose by 53 percent. These shocking crime rates are understatements, because the English police still grossly underreport crimes. . . . The 1998 British Crime Survey found four times as many crimes occurred as police records indicated. A disarmed public now faces outlaws armed with machine-guns. People in London residential neighborhoods have been machine-gunned to death. Gunmen have even burst into court and freed defendants. The British government forbids citizens to carry any article that might be used for self-defense. Even knitting needles and walking sticks have been judged to be offensive weapons. In 1994 an English homeowner used a toy gun to detain two burglars who had broken into his home. The police arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten and intimidate. A British Petroleum executive was wounded in an assault on his life in a London Underground train carriage. In desperation, he fought off his attackers by using an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick. He was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon. A youth fearful of being attacked by a gang was arrested for carrying a cycle chain. After police disarmed him, he was set upon and hospitalized as a result of a brutal beating. The prosecutor nevertheless insisted on prosecuting the victim for carrying a weapon. Seventy percent of rural villages in Britain entirely lack police presence. But self-defense must be reasonable, as determined after the fact by a prosecutor. What is reasonable to a victim being attacked or confronted with home intruders at night can be quite different from how a prosecutor sees it. A woman who uses a weapon to fight off an unarmed rapist could be convicted of using unreasonable force. In 1999 Tony Martin, a farmer, turned his shotgun on two professional thieves when they broke into his home at night to rob him a seventh time. Mr. Martin received a life sentence for killing one criminal, 10 years for wounding the second, and 12 months for having an illegal shotgun. The wounded burglar is already released from prison. American prosecutors now follow British ones in restricting self-defense to reasonable force as defined by prosecutors. Be forewarned that Americans can no longer use deadly force against home intruders unless the intruder is also armed and the homeowner can establish that he could not hide from the intruder and had reason to believe his life was in danger. The assault on England's version of the Second Amendment was conducted by unsavory characters in the British Home Office. Long before guns were banned, the Home Office secretly instructed the police not to issue licenses for weapons intended to protect home and property. In the British welfare state, crimes against property are not taken seriously. Professor Malcolm reports that criminals face minimal chances of arrest and punishment, but a person who uses force to defend himself or his property is in serious trouble with the law. A recent British law textbook says that the right to self-defense is so mitigated as to cast doubt on whether it still forms part of the law. An Englishman's home is no longer his castle. Thanks to gun control zealots, England has become the land of choice for criminals. BACK TO OZ! John Howard's Inverse Logic takes Australia to the "Dark Ages". Firearm Owners Association of Australia, John Howard's second foray into the disarmament of Australians is another move towards the return of the "Dark Ages" where the 'Inverse Logic' was popular. When alleged witches were drowned, if they died it was a sign of their innocence, if they flew off on a broom stick, obviously, they were guilty. Currently John Howard is doing the same thing, he is drowning the Licensed Registered Pistol Owners and Clubs, the innocent, so the guilty can continue at liberty. Inverse logic is very popular these days, if it's good enough for John Howard, it's good enough for all Australian Politicians. In fact if you ask any politicians, intelligent, logical questions, they will either lie or honestly tell you they cannot understand what's going on. Using John Howard's Inverse Logic, if we proved that 18 % of all homicides involved Asian's, then we should ban Asians from Australia. Of course this is ridiculous but the percentage is true and the same percentage figure may apply to homicide with firearms and John Howard would have no problem banning firearms on that same Inverse Logic. John Howard goes even further into the inverse logic and wants licensed shooters with their registered firearms banned, even though the politicians tell us that there are 2.5 million registered firearms in Australia, two were used in the Monash crime which has propelled the latest feeding frenzy on banning guns. This is the first time that this has happened in twenty years of studying the statistics. Two registered guns used by a licensed pistol shooter (Asian, non-English speaking, non-Australian). How he passed the Safety Test (written) with all the forms and Security checks by the Victorian Police when he cannot speak English is beyond the belief of anyone who deals with the Australian Bureaucratic Nightmare. Due to the above two firearms, licensed firearm misuse rate of .0000008 %, the Victorian Police are not to suffer for giving this Non- English Speaking Asian a licence for handguns. Asians are not to be banned from Australia for their propensity for murder, and no investigation into the 'Inverse Logic' results of the United Kingdoms forced surrender of 200,000 legally owned handguns is to be carried out. The Worldwide news gathering service, Reuters, circulated a report in June 2001 showing that gun-related murders in London tripled in April and May compared to the same period in 2000 (AAP,13/6/2001). Lord Bassam, on behalf of the Home Office tabled data showing that handgun-related crime grew by nearly 30 percent in 1999/00 compared to the previous 12 months-notwithstanding a total ban on private pistol ownership. In a report prepared by Professor David Farrington and statistician Dr Patrick Langan titled 'Crime And Justice in the United States and in England and Wales', it proved that the robbery rate in England and Wales, including muggings, was 40 percent higher; while the assault, burglary and automobile theft rates were nearly double those of the United States. Over a 15 year period crime rates over a range of major offences fell in the United States while those in England steadily increased. During this time as the Brits were disarming their population, the individual States in the United States that allowed handguns to be carried for self defence increased from a handful to over 30. The depiction of a largely disarmed and apparently safer Britain is a complete falsehood. John Howard would not have to investigate these figures, he would know. John Howard decides to use inverse logic and expend his great wrath on the poor sportsmen and women who have struggled tirelessly with ignorant bureaucrats, reams of paperwork, and much hard earned cash to compete in their chosen sport. They are the innocents who are going to be punished on a regular basis. They are the ones who are going to lose their property and their sport and if they make a mistake with their paperwork, their good name and liberty as well. At the present time it takes an average of six months from when a shooter joins the pistol club until he/she can legally buy his own pistol. Which other sport would be so dedicated? He has to contented with Club Membership fees of several hundred dollars, application forms to join the club, written references, nomination from other club members, a safety course, a written examination, acquire a steel storage safe for at least $200, apply for a Police Licence, more hundreds of dollars, be subjected to security checks and provide proof of membership in the club, wait the 28 days waiting period and the rest. Then get written approval from the club president that the pistol is suitable to be used in a competition at the club, then pay a deposit on a licensed pistol, then go to the Police Station and pay $18.75 for a Permit to Acquire a Handgun wait 28 waiting period and the rest. Finally after many phone calls, reams of ancillary paperwork, it arrives. The club now has a member who can compete on an equal basis. Now John Howard has banned his/her pistols and the restrictions have closed the club. It is an easier and quicker process for a young person to join the Police Force or the Military. Soldiers and Policemen have gone berserk and murdered wives, lovers, girlfriends, sometimes with their service firearms. The Defence forces in Australia lost 5000 firearms last year (Canberra Times article 12 /12/01). Before the NSW Police could take possession of the 1200 Glock Service Pistols at the Sydney Customs Office the entire shipment had been stolen. Queensland Police got caught selling illegal guns (Maroochydore), a cache of firearms was found in the ceiling of the St Kilda Police Station (Victoria). I hope all these extra heavy penalties for illegal trafficking apply to them. Would John Howard use his 'Inverse Logic' theory and ban the Police and Military? Not likely, he would have no great hulks to defend him, all of them are armed to the ankles with heavy duty artillery glued to their underwear. John would be like an ordinary person, defenceless! John Howard might pull another straw out of his box and say, "If it saves one life it will be worth it", but at the same time he gives millions of tax payers dollars to overseas Car manufactures to design and build, lighter, cheaper, weaker, plastic cars, filled with twenty gallons of explosive petrol, so that when they meet each other and come to a sudden stop the passengers get turned into "Krispies", but John would say that is expedient, good business. On the same day that John Howard called for a buy back on hand guns, our Australian Defence Minister informed the Australian people that we have a Terrorist Association operating within Australia which has already been credited with killing thousands of westerners. I'm pretty sure you don't expect the terrorists to hand in their hand guns and explosives. If we observed that, we would be a little more disposed to hand ours in, but I doubt it. Israel has a problem with terrorists of the same religion. They respond very differently and announce that it has made available 60,000 more handgun 'carry' licences. That's not like our club licence which only allows us to take our pistols to the club and back and keep them in our steel safes. Their licenses enable them to carry their pistols on their persons. Abraham Rabinovich reported, "Armed civilians have played a significant role in killing terrorists during the growing wave of terrorism". "The most recent instance occurred during an attack this week by a Palestinian gunman on a Tel Aviv restaurant where a wedding party was underway. A 46 year old civilian carrying a pistol shot the terrorist dead at close range after the terrorist had wounded him and killed three people. When a radio reporter asked him if he was a member of the Israeli security forces, he revealed he was a shoe salesman. There are already 265,000 guns in civilian hands. Police Inspector-General Shimo Aharonisky said "But there's no question, that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them while they were in progress. Chance passers-by have killed terrorists in the midst of gun attacks". Maybe it's the Israelis that are using the 'Inverse Logic', but it's doubtful as Israelis' Logic seems to work and John Howard's Logic sends us backwards beyond the 'Dark Ages' which could eventually be the end of us all, on a permanent basis. Maybe we should ask John to demonstrate his 'Inverse Logic Theory", so that after his next 'Gun Buy Back", when someone else is murdered, instead of putting all the innocent Pistol Shooters on Trial, we seat John Howard in the 'Dunking Chair', Trial by Ordeal of Drowning, if he flies away on a broom stick we will know he is guilty, if he drowns he will be innocent, like us! (I'm putting my money on his flying skills) Ron Owen Firearm Owners Association of Australia, PO Box 872, Gympie, 4570
Guns and violence Paul Craig Roberts www.TownHall.com July 29, 2002 Note: The following is the first of a two-part series Blaming violence on guns and fanning hysteria over accidental deaths to children from firearms are staples of anti-gun propaganda. Media help gun-control zealots spread false information that gun ownership and self-defense are certain paths to injury and death. Handgun Control, Inc., gives erroneous advice that if you are attacked, the best way to avoid injury "is to put up no defense." Anti-gun zealots blame the actions of criminals on guns and argue that disarming law-abiding gun-owners is the best way to reduce the crime rate. Scholars such as Gary Kleck, Don Kates and John Lott have demonstrated the falsity of these claims. Now comes an important new book from Harvard University Press. "Guns and Violence" by Bentley College history professor Joyce Lee Malcolm brings new evidence that guns reduce violence. Malcolm's carefully researched book is a study of guns and violence in England from the Middle Ages through the present day. When the English were armed to the teeth, violent crime was rare. Now that the English are disarmed, violent crime has exploded. Indeed, crime in England is out of control. Offering instruction for the United States, the English experience will be covered in a subsequent column. Malcolm presents many facts about guns and violence in America, and it is to these we turn first. Did you know that water is 19 times more dangerous to a child than a firearm? In 1996, 805 children died from accidental drownings and 42 died from firearm accidents. (Gun-control zealots inflate "child" firearm deaths by including teen-age drug-gang members killed in turf battles.) Bathtubs are twice as dangerous to children as guns. Fire is 18 times more dangerous to children than guns. Cars are 57 times more dangerous. Household cleaners and poisons are twice as dangerous. Did you know that defensive gun use prevents far more crimes than the police? National polls of defensive gun use by private citizens indicate that as many as 3.6 million crimes annually are prevented by armed individuals. In 98 percent of the cases, the armed citizen merely has to brandish his weapon. As many as 400,000 people each year believe they saved a life by being armed. Contrary to Handgun Control's propaganda, in less than 1 percent of confrontations do criminals succeed in taking the gun from the intended victim. Did you know that the testimony of incarcerated felons supports the large number of defensive gun uses? Thirty-four percent of felons said they were scared off, wounded or captured by victims who turned out to be armed. Convicted felons say that they are more deterred by armed victims than by the police. In the United States, where roughly 50 percent of households are armed, only 13 percent of burglaries occur with residents at home. In contrast, in Britain, where homeowners are disarmed, 50 percent of home burglaries take place with the residents present. Gun-control zealots claim that the availability of guns is the primary cause of homicides. Between 1973 and 1994, the number of guns in private ownership in the United States rose by 87 million. During this period, both the homicide rate and the percent of homicides committed with firearms dropped. Another test of the relationship between guns and violence is provided by the concealed-carry laws now in force in 33 states. Gun-control zealots predicted that traffic accidents and other altercations combined with an armed public would result in a bloodbath. Malcolm confronts this false prediction with empirical evidence: "In all the decades of experience with concealed-carry laws in an increasing number of states, there is only one recorded incident of the use of a permitted handgun in a shooting following a traffic accident, and that was determined to be a case of self-defense." The 17 states and the District of Columbia without concealed-carry permits enjoy an 81 percent higher rate of violent crime. Their restrictive gun laws produced 1,400 more murders, 4,200 more rapes, 12,000 more robberies and 60,000 more aggravated assaults. Malcolm disproves the claim that family members are the main victims of gun ownership. This myth results from FBI reports that most victims are "known" to the murderer. In the category of "known to the murderer," the FBI includes members of rival drug gangs, prostitutes and their pimps and even cab drivers killed in robberies by "customers." Far from the picture of hot-tempered spouses turning the family firearm upon one another in moments of rage, it turns out that 90 percent of adult murderers have prior criminal records involving major felonies. Three-quarters of juvenile murderers and their victims have an average of 10 prior criminal arraignments. The English Bill of Rights guarantees English citizens "arms for their defense." Politicians and bureaucrats stole this right from the people by subterfuge. In England today, only outlaws have guns. Sens. Lieberman, McCain and Schumer are working to duplicate the English calamity by stealing gun rights from the American people. Do these three senators represent the criminal lobby? Are they trying to create a black market in guns? WHEN GUNS SAVE LIVES Nov. 8, 2002 Orange County Register Editorial One of the biggest fallacies of gun-control supporters is their idea that guns in and of themselves are an evil that needs to be wiped out. That idea motivates gun controllers to support any number of limitations and regulations geared toward reducing the raw number of guns in the public's hands. But an attack in Laguna Hills recently shows how beneficial gun use can be, when used by potential victims protecting themselves against an armed attacker. Dana Kiefer and her 10-year-old daughter, Hana, were at Ms. Kiefer's parents' house when Dana's ex-husband Eric Kiefer broke into the home wielding a hatchet. Mr. Kiefer had a history of drug abuse and of abusing Ms. Kiefer during their marriage. He had a restraining order placed on him to stay away from her. The court decree didn't stop him from assaulting his ex-wife, and it certainly didn't stop him from breaking into his ex-in-laws' house, grabbing his daughter, then trying to force her to drink some form of caustic liquid, according to news reports. Fortunately, Ms. Kiefer's boyfriend fatally shot Mr. Kiefer with a shotgun, thus ending a confrontation that could have cost five people their lives. It's the latest example of what John R. Lott Jr. calls the underreported story of citizens who use guns to protect themselves from criminals. "When was the last time that you heard the national evening news reporting about a citizen using a gun to save lives?" Mr. Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," wrote in a newspaper article. "Few realize that people use guns defensively to stop about 2 million crimes a year, according to national surveys." That's an astounding statistic. In a sense, gun-controllers use a utopian argument for banning or limiting guns. They assume that if guns were eliminated, then people who would no longer be able to use them for evil. Therefore, there wouldn't be any need for average citizens to have guns to protect themselves and their families. But guns will always be with us. There are millions of guns in the United States, so it's hard to imagine eliminating them all, especially from criminals. Mr. Kiefer was attacking his ex-wife and daughter with a hatchet. Without guns, the attacker with the biggest knife or strongest physique would succeed. Guns are a great equalizer - which is why even some feminists are coming around to the pro-gun rights argument. An Orange County judge told the Register that the Laguna Hills incident shows that some people who violate restraining orders need to be held in custody until a judge can evaluate their mental health. That's a good point. But it's not enough. Innocent people shouldn't have to risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones by going unarmed and hoping the justice system will get its act together. Guns can save lives. If you doubt that, think about what might have happened to Dana and Hana Kiefer had their household been unarmed.
What about lunatics that shoot innocent people? The solution is to deal with the lunatic, not the bomb, car, knive, plane or firearm. Lock them away, stop them from owning guns and monitor what they do, inspect their homes. Prevention is better than cure. Passing laws they ignore is not the answer. When I applied for a shooters license and many years later acquired handguns I had to undertake police interviews. Howard's Gun laws stopped all this. WHY? It is almost beyond belief that in a country filled with so many imported criminals, uneducated, or drug / substance/gambling abusors there is no requirement for a new firearm owner to provide references or undertake police interview. Also, we need a register of prohibited people - not firearms. We don't let child sex offenders work with children - so why do we let people with violent mental health problems out on the street and pretend they can look after themselves? ______________________ What about Port Arthur? The answer is as follows. Why did the Police allow a known dangerous idiot to have a firearm? Why was one of the firearms previously surrendered to Police in one State and then on sold in another? Why was the fire exit in the Building broken, thus locking everyone in and contributing to the death rate? Why wasn't any law abiding citizen carrying a gun to fight back? Where were the security guards - where were the Police? Why did the movie industry for the decade before promote mass shootings. ie. Rambo, Terminator, Taxi Driver etc.? Why was an unstable mental case, allowed to watch and own so many violent videos, many that glorified mass shootings? Are you silly enough to believe that a bomb would not have killed more people or have you forgotten about Oklahoma or Bali or Australia's largest domestic fire-bomb attack in a Queensland Night Club? Why is no-one stupid enough to call for a ban on planes or box cutters, yet stupid enough to to call for a ban on guns? _____________________________ Why do sportsmen need firearms that are not used at the Olympics? The Olympics is a business, a business controlled by individuals. Olympic events are designed for isolated types of shooting events, events that many shooters believe are far less skillful and or exciting than the events they compete in. The Olympic type events are also designed for countries with limited land space that cannot provide long shooting ranges. Some would also say that the Olympic type events are acceptable to countries that don't have armed citizens. Politicians are ignorant of firearm sports and most are unwilling to take the time to change this. Forcing sportsmen to compete in inferior shooting events is unfair and unjust. We don't force golfers to compete in put-put golf - why do we seek to do the equivalent with shooters?	What about guns and children being shot at school? No child should have unsupervised access to firearms - they are a tool for adults, to be used by 'Good' people for legal purpose. No child should grow up watching endless violence on TV. No child should be allowed to play video games that train them to be psychopathic killers. And especially no child should be bullied at school. Schools are a magnet for child molesters and perverts etc. - they need adequate security, they need the protection of armed guards. (Lets face it, there are plenty of people that need a good job.) What about suicide? Why don't you make society better so people don't want kill themselves. Put money into mental health care - don't waste it banning guns. Plus only a fool would blame the tool when the blame lies with the figure that pulled the trigger. Also if someone of sound mind wants to end their life, that's their decision not yours - let them use the tool they choose. Accept the facts, you can't ban anything, especially not Guns. Even in China the death penalty doesn't work. What about domestic violence? Are we supposed to feel sorry for a woman that stays married to a drunk, drug addict or spouse abuser? If she is not smart enough to ring the Police, or she doesn't think the law can protect her, why doen't she arm herself and look after herself? What about Monash? How can someone who can't speak English attend a post graduate course or is his wealth more important? If the Government did not waste so much money on the 'gun buyback' would Universities still be so reliant on selling their courses to overseas students? Why are students, many that are not yet adults, many that experiment with drugs and many that are unstable, not subject to Police interview prior to them owning firearms? Why do Politicians encourage arseholes to own firearms, encourage and pay arseholes to come and live in our country and then blame and punish honest shooters when, surprise - surprise a mass killing happens? What is the solution? All firearm owners need to be educated, and need to be of sound mind and means. New firearm owners need to provide references and submit to background checks and police interview. A student or child should not have access to firearms without supervision. Ownership should be for adults, the adult stage being defined by job, attitude status and actions, not age. Finally, don't buy the central repository storage argument. Where do you think the FIJI and Solomon Island coup arms came from!